HARLINGEN – The cold November can herald the coming holiday season with joy and a sparkling anticipation.
The gray skies with the drizzling rain can also single a time of dark sorrows for those who have no resources with which to celebrate.
For Diana Barba and her two daughters, the approaching Christmas promised to increase this sense of loss … but Cricket Wireless and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Harlingen stepped in to help.
“It’s a very neat program that they have,” said Barba, whose two daughters Abigail and Victoria received two gift cards worth $50 each from Target and Wal-Mart, plus a $100 HEB card for the whole family.
“It will benefit our Christmas a lot,” she said. “It lifts some things off your shoulders, being on a budget.”
Barba and her girls live at LeMoyne Gardens Apartments, a community administered by the Harlingen Housing Authority; Abigail, 10, and Victoria, 9, spend a great deal of their time at the LeMoyne Gardens Unit of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Harlingen – and that’s where they and several other families were pleasantly surprised by their good luck.
“They were all very grateful and felt very blessed,” said Alma Dones, unit director for the Boys and Girls Clubs.
“It’s definitely going to help them,” Dones said. “They are really going to benefit from it.”
This is the third year in a row that Cricket has partnered with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to enable young people to have successful lives, said Josh Balli, senior marketing director for Cricket.
“This year we’re giving over $140,000 across the nation to make the holidays bright, specifically Harlingen or the Valley in general,” Balli said. “Cricket was able to give back $5,000 to families to support.”
That money was split between Harlingen and McAllen where Cricket did another presentation with that Boys and Girls Club. This is all part of the “12 Days of Cricket” campaign which launched November 14 in conjunction with World Kindness Day.
“We work with the Boys and Girls Clubs across the nation,” Balli said. “It’s not just South Texas that we support, it’s pretty much everywhere in the U.S. We were doing events in New York and California.”
Treisy Rios and her four children – Arlette, Annette, Iker and Laura – will have a Christmas this year thanks to the much-needed assistance. In the days and weeks leading up to the gesture from Cricket Wireless, she wondered if she could purchase gifts for her kids. Now, she knows they’ll all enjoy Christmas.
“It means a lot,” Rios said. “It helped me a lot for this Christmas, because in these times my husband doesn’t work because it rains and it’s cold. He cuts yards and all that.”
Her daughter Arlette, 10, said she “got a face” Monday when she realized she and her siblings were each receiving $100 in gift cards.
“I am grateful,” she said. “I feel good because most people don’t get that much.”
Such generosity brings with it a certain poignancy to Barba, who is currently in remission from ovarian cancer.
“I’ve been battling ovarian cancer since 2017,” she said. “I think the hardest part would be losing my husband in 2020 from a cerebral stroke due to high blood pressure.”
Her daughter Abigail Martinez appreciated the gesture too.
“It felt actually good because my Mom, she said she wasn’t gonna have enough money to give us Christmas gifts,” said Abigail, 10. “Now that she has the money, she’s going to spend it on Christmas gifts.”
